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The History of Pumpkin Beer

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By Erik Loomis

On September 27, 2011

At 3:30 pm

In General

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Now this is fascinating.

What’s particularly interesting is that the decline of pumpkin beer in the early 19th century was not about temperance, but about a modernizing nation turning its back on traditional food as rustic and uncouth. This is interesting given today’s fretting among first world foodies about developing world nations leaving their traditional foods behind for western-style processed food. And even today’s food revival has not really brought pumpkin back into vogue, as one can see in the pumpkin beers that often attempt to clone pumpkin pie rather than pumpkin itself.

alcohol, beer, food

Lee

The food revival hasn’t brought back other traditional American staples like salt pork and hard tack either. The food revival is trying to bring back a past that never existed. Its kind of a more benign liberal version of conservative nostalgia for simpler times. Its equally misguided, potentially as dangerous but at least the aims are good.
- Erik Loomis
  
  I would say the difference between something like salt pork and pumpkin is that by most accounts salt pork was completely disgusting whereas one could see pumpkin as fulfilling all the desires of the liberal food nostalgist, to build off your terms. There’s a really funny bit in Confederates in the Attic where the reenactors are eating salt pork to be extra realistic and just about puking.
  - Uncle Kvetch
    
    I tried making refried beans from the recipe in Cook’s Illustrated (usually a very reliable source), which called for salt pork, for reasons that escape me to this day. You fry it low and slow to render out the fat and then use that to saute the aromatics. It wasn’t easy to find (Whole Foods had it, of all places), and it was indeed perfectly revolting. Then a Mexican-American friend informed me that his mother always used bacon for her refrieds, as did everybody else he could remember. It worked much better.
    - Russell
      
      Y’all are nuts. We always put salt pork into beans and soups when I was young. It tasted great. In that regard, the difference between days of yore and today is that salt once was a great preservative, and now is viewed as none too healthy.
  - Halloween Jack
    
    I don’t remember salt pork in Confederates in the Attic, but I do remember the rancid bacon. (Salt pork is still used in Van Camp’s Pork and Beans, and I always took care as a kid to fish the bit of salt pork out because I’ve always found solid fat (i.e. actual fatty tissue) to be unbelievably gross.
  - LeeEsq
    
    Pumpkin does make for good pies and its good in Japanese style curries. Its a good ingredient used well. I’m not really into nostalgia and historical reenactment. Liberal food nostalgia just irks me with how ahistorical it is.
    - Anonymous
      
      Many Native American dishes involve pumpkin and are quite good. Is that sort of “liberal nostalgia” okay?
- DrDick
  
  Hey, in some parts of the country salt pork never really disappeared. I for one actually like it, mostly cooked with beans or greens (but don’t tell my doctor that). I do not think hard tack was ever a staple, except on ships or for traveling long distances.
  - JB2
    
    I live just outside of Detroit, and I can find salt pork in a dozen different places – must be a Southern (by way of the Great Migration) kind of thing.
    
    And there are many, many different recipes where nothing, especially not bacon, will serve as well as salt pork – Southern food, French food, English food.
Lee

It occurs to me that the modern pumpkin beer makers are taking cues from the Belgians, by adding spices, rather than the English and Colonial American brewing techniques, which would be more authentic. I think the Belgiums make the best beer so I don’t mind.
actor212

I had a glass of pumpkin ale at John Harvard’s restaurant (it’s a chain not unlike TGI Friday’s that specializes in brews)

Not bad. It was a bit disconcerting as it was served with cinnamon and brown sugar rimming the glass, but it was tasty.
Chuchundra

I had some pumpkin beer recently and it was just vile. I have a pretty broad taste for different types of beer. I’ll often order something random that I haven’t heard of just to try something new.

But pumpkin beer? It was pretty much undrinkable. I took a few swallows and poured the rest down the drain.
- Erik Loomis
  
  Pumpkin beers cover a large range, from those that use the pumpkin subtlely to those that really try to create pumpkin pie in a glass. I wouldn’t throw the whole style under the bus yet.
Scott Lemieux

as one can see in the pumpkin beers that often attempt to clone pumpkin pie rather than pumpkin itself.

Nonetheless, the Southern Tier — which does this — is by far the best I’ve ever had.
- Erik Loomis
  
  I wasn’t necessarily meaning that as a bad thing, just an observation.
- djw
  
  Yes, ST has the best “pumpkin pie” beer I’ve had. The Elysian’s is probably the best pumpkin ale without much spicing. I prefer the latter, I think, but they’re both excellent. I had a pumpkin imperial stout last year that was delicious but I can’t remember who brewed it. I have a bottle of Dogfish’s entry into the genre at home, haven’t tried it yet.
  
  I’ve had a number of them that are close to being good, but they just need to dial back the spicing by 20-50%.
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah, Pumking is pretty much like drinking pumpkin pie with 8% alcohol. It’s tough to get through a whole bomber, though, because of the sweetness. DFH’s Punkin isn’t as tasty, but may be easier to drink. Those, however, are the only pumpkin beers I’ve had that are worth drinking. Even Smuttynose kind of tastes like dirt. In all, it’s a seasonal that I like, but I’m glad it’s only here once per year.
Leeds man

Pumpkin beer sounds like an interesting starting point for a real drink. Someone else thought so.
- Karate Bearfighter
  
  The Pumpkin Lager they distill this from is also phenomenal.
- sue
  
  I had high hopes for it, but I didn’t find it that impressive. It just tasted like whisky, which isn’t a bad thing, but I really didn’t taste the pumpkin or the spices.
jon

The pumpkin beers I’ve had have all been of the overspiced, pumpkin pie variety, and I despise that. Same for most harvest and holiday ales and added fruit beers too.

But I’d be interested in seeing what might be able to be done with a new take on an archaic recipe. Same as I have a soft spot for new attempts at meads, ciders and grogs. I had a Scotch ale once that was hopped with heather, and that was rather fetching. I’d like to believe that a pumpkin ale could be wonderful.
- dwreck
  
  As a couple others have noted, Dogfish Head makes a great pumpkin ale that is more about pumpkin than pumpkin pie. For anyone in North Carolina, particularly the Triangle area, it’s also worth mentioning Fullsteam’s Carver Sweet Potato Lager. They also play it straight without the cloves and other spices, so instead you get an interesting beer instead of carbonated, alcoholic pie.
  - Sconnie
    
    Did a tasting the other night. The Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale this year is quite good, as is the Southern Tier. The Buffalo Bill Original Pumpkin Ale was crass, but we couldn’t obtain the Imperial Pumpkin, which is supposedly better. The Lakefront Brewery Pumpkin Lager was good as well. The Blue Moon pumpkin was meh: a wheat with pumpkin spices but no actual pumpkin. The best, by far, was the Tyranena Painted Ladies Amber Ale: subtle, with enough hints of pumpkin and spices to not let you forget the season. http://www.tyranena.com/.
Halloween Jack

I wonder how it would go with some real mince pie (assuming the latter didn’t drive me to kill someone in their sleep).
Antonio Conselheiro

According to “The Alcoholoic Republic” early temperance advocate actually advocated temperance and not abstinence, and beer was promoted as a temperance drink. Apparently the American Republic drank whiskey all day and binged on weekends.
- Halloween Jack
  
  See also Beer Street and Gin Lane by William Hogarth.
JB2

“Ichabod” is a pumpkin ale made by New Holland Brewery of Holland, Michigan; a very good beer. It’s a straightforward amber-ish ale with a nice pumpkin aroma that sneaks upon you as you swallow. Yummy.
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Matty

I like some pumpkin beers/ales, but there is a fine line indeed…some are just better than others. Portland’s Shipyard Brewery has been making their Pumpkinhead for years and it tastes as refined as it should. Wachusett in Mass. makes an Imperial Pumpkin that could be described as pie-ish but with more complexity. It should also be noted that not all types of pumpkin are conducive to brewing (or pies, ftm).
Matty

P.S. Pumpking IS rather off-putting, IMO…very little character and a distinctively synthetic taste like a bargain-bin pumpkin soda.